


(not your ghost anymore)

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: (even if i could) make a deal with god [your blue-eyed boys related short-fic] [100]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 'you're such a jerk' means 'i love you', Avengers Movie Night, Disabled Character, M/M, Mentally Ill Character, Pierce died too quick, Steve has a lot of FEELINGS, banter and snark, drunk!Jane is adorable, sex that is (mostly) about sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 13:11:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5376425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[H]e makes coffee and brings it over, because there's no mug on the one of the nesting tables Bucky's got pulled over in front of him, and it makes for an excuse to wander over, glance at the tablet and ask, "Who's she?" as he puts both cups of coffee down and sits beside Bucky on the couch. </p><p>The kitten's curled up in the space in Bucky's lap between his ankle and the rest of him, asleep. Steve'd wondered where she'd got to. After a beat, Bucky inhales a little deeper and then shoves the tablet towards Steve, rubbing his eyes with his right fingertips. As Steve picks it up, Bucky reaches for his coffee. </p><p>The photo on the tablet's from a Wikipedia article, and Steve hits the back button at just about the same time Bucky says, "His wife," quiet and dull, as the article title loads and reads <i>Grace Alice Pierce</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(not your ghost anymore)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of [**this series**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/132585), which is for short-fic associated with my fic [**your blue-eyed boys**](http://archiveofourown.org/series/107477), because I needed somewhere to stash it.

There are a lot of things to like about the Tower floor. Steve is willing to admit this. Well, sort of admit it. He has not actually admitted it in as many words to Tony, because it would be awkward, but he doesn't retaliate to Tony being occasionally smug, which basically counts as admitting it. When you're him, and Tony. 

(Steve's recently been forced to reassess basically everything about interacting with Tony, aggravatingly enough. He's had to do it because of the day he was griping and Bucky looked up at him in amusement and said, "You know you're bitching about the exact same shit his dad used to pull, right? And it's fucking hilarious." 

Steve tried to argue with that, and he did actually manage to come up with one or two things Tony does that annoy him that Howard didn't, but in the main he had to concede the point. It's made him think about stuff, and also to think part of the problem is the whole "you should basically be my godson but you're as old as my mother would be if she were still alive and this wasn't the future", which is a little convoluted but gets the point down.) 

Both gyms are nice. The suite is nice, and whether or not Bucky's entirely aware of it, it's clear to Steve that watching stuff in the media room feels less like lounging sloth and more like making a choice to do something than just sitting on a couch somewhere, and Steve thinks that's a good thing. But Steve has to say the nicest part is the art studio. 

He has art stuff at home, of course. And actually home has good light, and plenty of space to set up for a while - but when it comes down to it, if Steve wants to do something a little more involved, or a little bigger, that's basically when he inclines to spending a few days at the Tower and use the space that's _meant_ for it. 

Over the months, he's slowly worked his way through what Tony tried to pre-stock (which is basically everything in an art shop) to find all the things he wants to use, and get more. The stuff that's not quite for him - because Tony really did basically just order a whole shop - Steve drops off at a children-and-youth centre near the condo. 

(He gets a lot of "are you sure?" from the wide-eyed art-programs-director who the nice lady at the counter called to come and talk to him when he arrived. He reassures the guy that he is very, very sure, that it's really better it all get used, and that he figures the staff know how to use it best. A few weeks later he gets a thank-you card signed by what seems to be the teen art group, which feels kind of nice.) 

He rearranges the room on a regular basis, depending on - well, sometimes not even so much on what he's doing as how he feels right then. To be honest, sometimes he rearranges it just for something to do, something to do with his hands that needs just enough thought to keep him from thinking about anything else. Rearranging the studio still feels productive, even if it's all he does: after all, he could _theoretically_ paint or sketch or mess around with 3D projects more effectively when he's done. Even if he doesn't actually go on to do it, because he ends up doing something else. 

It's, well. Soothing. 

Art, on the other hand, is not always soothing. Is sometimes the exact opposite of soothing. Today he comes back out of the studio after an hour because otherwise he might just put a foot through the canvas and throw it out the window, and at this point he's not even sure what he wants out of this painting anymore, and that's usually a sign that it's time to stop. He used to keep going, but he used to be doing this stuff for assignments, for grades: now he's not, and stopping when he's so frustrated it's not enjoyable anymore is usually the best plan. So he comes out to find a snack, or some coffee, or something. 

Bucky's in the living-room, when Steve comes down the hall into the main suite. Like pretty much everywhere, they've moved stuff around in there, too, sorting out where furniture really works best by mostly trial and error - balancing usage with (to be honest) hypervigilance and paranoia. Now, for instance, the l-shaped couch lives wedged in the corner, where the window meets the wall between the living-room and the bedroom, because that means Bucky can easily see the elevator and out the window and it makes a difference to whether or not he'll use the it. 

The stuff at home's all set up with that kind of thing in mind, too, but the condo's more . . .well, normal shaped, rooms a bunch of squares stuck on other squares, which is way too square for a building Tony designed. That means it's not quite as obvious what the arrangement's being tweaked towards, because it's only logical for one couch-type-thing to go under the front window (up against the wall) and the other to go against the long back wall. Here there's more space, and more options, which makes for more choices. 

And if that's not a slightly annoying metaphor for life, Steve's not sure what is. 

Right now, Bucky's sitting on the couch, settled into the corner of arm-and-back that matches the corner of window-and-wall. He's got one leg bent in front of him with his right arm resting on it, other leg tucked under that one, left arm resting on his lap - and he's frowning at a picture of a woman on the tablet. Steve can just barely see enough to identify that, from here. The tablet's lying on the couch beside him, and the frown has the tinge of distance to it that it gets when he's trying to make something make sense. 

Which isn't necessarily a great thing. 

Steve takes a couple minutes to make coffee, first. It's plausible deniability. It's a thin veneer of plausible deniability, but he finds even the veneer matters: even if it's not fooling anyone, it is saying _I care enough about what embarrasses you to make the effort of pretending._

( _Do you know how stupidly layered this stuff can get?_ he bursts out once, one time he goes for coffee with Natasha. She doesn't actually have time to give him the amused look before he's waving that off and saying, _No forget that, of course you do, I'm just . . . saying._

Natasha pats his shoulder, in a surprisingly un-condescending way, and says, _I know._ ) 

So he makes coffee and brings it over, because there's no mug on the one of the nesting tables Bucky's got pulled over in front of him, and it makes for an excuse to wander over, glance at the tablet and ask, "Who's she?" as he puts both cups of coffee down and sits beside Bucky on the couch. 

The kitten's curled up in the space in Bucky's lap between his ankle and the rest of him, asleep. Steve'd wondered where she'd got to. After a beat, Bucky inhales a little deeper and then shoves the tablet towards Steve, rubbing his eyes with his right fingertips. As Steve picks it up, Bucky reaches for his coffee. 

The photo on the tablet's from a Wikipedia article, and Steve hits the back button at just about the same time Bucky says, "His wife," quiet and dull, as the article title loads and reads _Grace Alice Pierce_. 

Steve notes that like just about everything and anything to do with SHIELD, HYDRA and Insight, the article's locked to further editing. 

For a moment, everything's quiet. Steve reads the article, or at least skims it, eyes scanning down the usual shape of a Wikipedia biography; Bucky drinks some of his coffee and stares through the wall, until Steve's done skimming and looks up. 

"I'm pretty sure I killed her," Bucky goes on, without inflection, and without moving. He doesn't have to look at Steve to see him, from there; Steve's got a pretty good handle on how good Bucky's peripheral vision is, by now. "I've been - there've been pieces. Flashes and bits, and just - bugging me. So I went looking." 

As mildly - truly mildly - as he can, right now, Steve says, "I didn't ask." He puts the tablet down on the table and picks up his own mug, and _now_ Bucky's head turns a little and Steve gets the edge of a sardonic look. 

"Yeah, people in fucking Brazil could hear you Not Asking," he retorts. He shifts, the kitten complains, and he stops: Steve wonders, if the cat weren't there, if Bucky'd be walking away. 

Instead of thinking about that more, or asking, he glances at the article summary, trying to pin down something else to say. In the end, since they're here anyway, since they've got to this metaphorical place and there's no rewind button, he says, "Cause of death listed as cardiac arrest, with family history of heart disease." He his tone neutral: it's not an argument. It's an observation. Maybe an invitation. 

"Yeah, well." Bucky scrapes his right thumbnail over the metal of his left thumb. "Husband would know about your family fucking history, and there's a lot of shit that can stop a heart, and a fucking lot of that wouldn't show up in an autopsy back then." His mouth stretches for a second into a sliver of humourless smile. "Especially if you don't see any reason for there to be one, and the husband doesn't ask." 

He's staring through the side of the coffee-table now, still digging at the join in the metal. He says, "She was at a rented vacation house in Florida. He was in Berlin. She had the baby." 

Steve'd forgotten that Pierce had a daughter, and he suddenly wonders where she is now, what happened to her. Then he pushes that right aside, and _stops_ wondering. What was it Clint had said the other day? Not his circus, not his monkeys. It'd been about something else to do with Pierce, too, the bastard. And Clint twitting him, pointing out he was not in fact liable for any of the shit that bastard did, and that he had enough on his plate. 

Not his circus, not his monkeys. He had enough monkeys. Maybe some days too many. 

Out loud he says, "If you're gonna run from somebody, when they're on another continent's a good time. And if you have the money, a rental's not a bad way to hide - " 

"And if you're that fucking son of a bitch," Bucky picks it up, same pattern, still uninflected, "and you're in fucking Berlin, it's less fucking hassle than usual to get your hands on your best asset and use it. I know." 

Steve suppresses the grimace at the words _asset_ and _it_ , and doesn't say anything. 

After a second Bucky goes on, "She tried to call for an ambulance but all she managed to say was that she needed help, before she lost consciousness. She was on the floor in the kitchen. It's in the fucking article, but I already knew before I read it. I knew all of it, before I read it. After I read the name." 

A lot of thoughts kind of . . .hit each other, bounce off each other, inside Steve's head. One is that Pierce was exactly the kind of fucking bastard who'd . . .well, use HYDRA assets like that to kill his own wife because she was trying to leave him, and then justify it by calling it security, like he'd've told her a fucking thing; another is that Bucky's probably right, because while he speculates a lot - and a lot of shit - when he's in the right sharp-edged frame of mind (which Steve doesn't think is good for him even then, but that's besides the point), he doesn't get. . . pulled in like this, or quiet, when he's really just making guesses, or self-mockingly trying to blame himself for every unsolved homicide in the world. At most he'll be stubborn about looking something up to make a point, and that's only if Steve's been stupid enough to try to argue instead of just being quietly Incredulous. 

Not . . .like this. 

A third, and the one Steve doesn't want, and the one Steve knows is going to stick with him, probably forever or at least a fuck of a lot longer than he wants, the one that's even more inescapable the day he's been fucking struggling copying a portrait for three hours, God damn it - 

That third thought is that the picture of Grace Alice Pierce (no, _Mathers_ , Steve corrects himself, giving her back her maiden name because the poor women didn't deserve to be saddled with the other after everything) is in colour, a portrait-quality head-shot - and so there's no way not to notice she has fair skin, high cheekbones, dark, straight hair, a certain line of the jaw and big, vividly blue eyes. 

Steve can't stop himself from picking up the tablet looking down the article again to find the date of her marriage or - once he's looked - from knowing that it's three years after Pierce's first diplomatic trip to Russia. Or that the day they met is only four months after that same day. 

Son of a bitch. 

He doesn't know if Bucky's noticed that. It probably doesn't make any difference. He puts the tablet down on the table, trying to put a lot of the rest of the shit it's let loose down with it. 

"You should come watch something with me," he says, conversationally; when Bucky looks at him, he adds, "if I go back to painting right now I'm gonna end up throwing the thing out the window, even if it means I have to break the window first. Then somebody'll have to fix it, and I'll have to put up with Tony making snide comments. Just nothing good all around, with that." 

It's a load of crap, and Bucky knows it, Bucky's face _says_ he knows it, and it's not like Steve expects otherwise. But he can't think of anything to say that's going to make it better, and Bucky stewing on it's going to make it worse. It is what it is, but they don't have to stay here. Metaphorically. 

After a minute Bucky looks down and says, "Yeah. Sure. Why not."

 

They end up on the chaise-thing in the movie-room; the chaise-thing has a high back on one side, and Bucky's sort of half-tucked between Steve and it, the other half sprawled over Steve's front, Bucky's head on the front of Steve's shoulder and his left arm draped so that it's all the way over and barely a weight. There's an excitable Scottish geologist on the screen explaining how sometime in the next million years or so Africa's going to break into pieces because of a mantle-plume, but Steve's not sure how much of it Bucky's actually taking in. Is pretty sure Bucky's had his eyes closed for a while. 

Steve's only got half his attention on it either, maybe half. The other half is . . . stuck. Stuck on stuff that doesn't _want_ to be left on the living-room table. 

Damn it. 

The thing is - 

The thing is that Grace and Bucky could be siblings. She could be his sister - she _looks_ ( _no, Steve, looked, she's dead_ , he reminds himself) like Bucky's sister, almost more than a real sister would. There's coincidence, and there's room for a lot of it - it's not like blue eyes, black hair and high cheekbones are exactly rare anywhere occupied by white Europeans or their descendants. 

So there's coincidence, and then there's the part where Grace Alice Mathers damn well _could_ be Bucky's twin sister, to look at her, and it's enough that Steve finds himself going through all the men Bucky's aunts and cousins married (whether he wants to or not), trying to remember their damn family names. And there'd been a lot of them, a lot of aunts and cousins, on both sides - a lot of women who'd've given their birth-names away and traded them for a husband's. But no Mathers, not that he can remember. 

But if it means the possible, accidental connection is - thankfully - not there, it doesn't do anything for . . . well. 

Every-damn-other-thing the resemblance suggests. 

Especially if you're Steve, and one of the things you can't get out of your head sometimes is the moment of Bucky on his back on the ground under you, laughing vicious and bitter as Hell and asking you _who do you think would be willing to get that close_ \- and then taking the twisted and bitter further because there's further for them to go. 

With _Pierce wouldn't've sullied himself_ and then more laughter, real laughter at the hideous joke that yes, for a fraction of a second, _that_ pissed Steve the fuck off, _too_. 

If you can't get that out of your head, sometimes, and then there's . . . well. Then there's Grace Alice Mathers, and soon enough _after_ what would have been the first time Pierce ever saw - 

And then Grace Alice's corpse, when Pierce found out he couldn't quite control her. 

And it feels like there should be whole damn speeches of disgust, for that, and yet all of what Steve's head manages to spit is _you piece of shit_. Just with enough venom to kill a damn city. 

He wonders if that piece of shit even knew. Can't even decide which is worse, if he did or if he didn't - if it's sicker that Pierce would deliberately choose a mirror image he could misuse without making himself the target of his own disgust, or if it just ate at him and drove his choices where he couldn't stand to look. 

He thinks about it. 

And thinking about it Steve's conscious, incredibly conscious, of his hands on Bucky's skin, of his palms and fingers against Bucky's back under the cloth of his shirt. Of the only barely metaphorical sense of rubbing away every second any piece of shit even _looked_ at Bucky and didn't deserve it. Leaving tracks of _home_ , instead, all the fingerprints of _we_. 

Stories of something Bucky wants, wanted. 

Steve's pretty sure the way he touches Bucky now is different, different even from the Front, or Paris. Pretty sure. Well, maybe entirely sure.

And maybe a small part of that's confidence, because even when you've not-quite-consciously decided that where you are right now isn't the real world, and you don't have to think about repercussions, and there are no consequences to anything, and who knows if we'll all be dead tomorrow _anyway_ so don't bother thinking about it - even then, the gap between "has managed a kiss or two" and "has been treating sex like an appealing and engrossing hobby since the age of fifteen" is a bit intimidating. So maybe part of it is that. But only a small part. 

It's mostly something else. 

He hesitates over the word _possessive_ ; to be possessive, someone has to be a possession, and there's . . . so much wrong in that idea (and so much that's a bad idea, especially for this) that Steve'd be here all day explaining it. And _protective_ implies there's something to protect from, and also puts Steve in mind of broody mother birds fussing over chicks and shuffling them back into nests, and that is really not the idea he's trying to grasp. Maybe somewhere in between. 

It's hard to even think about this kind of thing without getting into the language of ownership, and Steve thinks that's a bit messed up. That people, maybe, are a bit messed up. 

_Familiar_ is part of it, too, but it's not enough. People take familiar things for granted, _'familiarity breeds contempt'_ and all that, and it's more - 

It's that he knows Bucky better now, all the way into weight of bones and form and skin and he knows - 

Well. It's _knowing_. 

It's understanding where his hands go and what that means, what it tells the back of his best friend's head. Steve knows all of Bucky now, every inch of skin and bone and metal, and if there are ghosts - and there are - that try to work their way underneath, he knows how to push them away, use his hands and body to run them off. And that's the bit that's in between possessive and protective, maybe, becomes something else. Not about how Steve gets to own or keep, but about how they sure as _Christ_ don't. Not about clutching and holding, but about driving away. About _you don't get to be here and I will get rid of you, wear you down and run you out_ \- 

Something like that. Maybe. 

Writing _you're home, you're here, you're safe_ on Bucky's skin with his own. _Home_ and _safe_ and _always_. 

Something like that. 

After a while he rests one hand on Bucky's lower back, over far enough for his fingers to just start to curl around Bucky's waist. With the other, he runs the tips of his middle finger and ring-finger along the curve just back from the long scar on Bucky's left shoulder. Just past the point where metal runs out, where it slides underneath his skin and the connectors tied to muscle give out and turn into flesh again. Bucky moves into that, a little, and Steve moves his hand a little in turn, turning it so that all four fingers curve and stroke down the same line. Just enough pressure to feel how skin gives, compared to metal. 

"If you keep doing that," Bucky says, mildly, "I'm going to have to do something about it." 

"Wow, now that sounds awful," Steve retorts, now flattening to the pads of his first two fingers and rubbing circles with them, over skin and the edge of scar to the beginning of metal and back, first up to the top of Bucky's shoulder and then back down. And then admittedly his breath catches, a little, when Bucky gets him back for it by palming Steve through his jeans. 

"Smart-mouth little shit," Bucky informs him and Steve snorts - and then inhales sharply again, shifting so he can spread his legs a little. 

"Well you go and make the most pointlessly ineffective threat _ever_ ," he starts to counter, and then stops, because Bucky's slid himself up so he can kiss Steve instead of listening to him. His shirt pulls at Steve's, rucks it up to expose skin at his waist and he twitches a little at the coolness of Bucky's left hand pressing from his ribs down his abdomen and around to his hips. 

"Sorry," Bucky murmurs against Steve's mouth, really unconvincingly. _Really_ unconvincingly. 

"No you're not," Steve retorts. His hands drop to Bucky's waist, always moving just a little - up, to stroke his thumbs along the bottom of Bucky's ribs, then down to his hips to run fingers along the skin just above the waistband of Bucky's jeans, slide his palms up Bucky's lower abdomen and around to his back again. 

"I'm really not," Bucky agrees, and then he moves. He straddles Steve's hips, weight settling against Steve's body and bones the same way tight heat settles in the pit of Steve's stomach; he kisses Steve's mouth while he pushes Steve's shirt up with both hands. For a minute the chill of metal on one side and the warmth of skin on the other fills Steve's head with the sense of spinning but staying in one place, the sudden shivering contraction of thought into feeling. 

His hands slide up Bucky's back to cross one arm over the other and pull him closer. Bucky mouths the edge of Steve's jaw and murmurs, "You should fuck me," and Steve more or less manages, "Oh _God_ yes," even though Bucky's cheating, dragging his tongue over the spot on Steve's throat. 

They end up on the floor, managing to half-fall half-slide off the chaise and not really caring. One of the worn places on Bucky's jeans tears under Steve's hand getting those jeans off, but neither of them really cares about that, either, or the stretching, snapping sound of the stitches around the collar of Steve's shirt.

The chaise isn't heavy enough for Bucky to brace himself against but the table is, heavy solid wood and iron, like a rock in the middle of the room. He rakes his hair out of his eyes and Steve almost loses a moment to the look, the one just about guaranteed to dissolve anything resembling thought into the hot, spreading desire to do anything to keep it on him. Almost. 

Steve finds the lube in a side-table drawer; he slicks his fingers and kisses his way up Bucky's spine to the back of his neck and ignores Bucky's impatient noise, half an exasperated growl. When he slides his fingers into Bucky, he nuzzles at the side of Bucky's neck and Bucky turns his head, reaching back to catch the side of Steve's face with his left hand. 

Bucky bites Steve's bottom lip in annoyance, even though he bears down on Steve's hand. "I don't fucking _care_ \- " he starts, but Steve reaches up and catches his forearm, brings Bucky's fingers to his mouth and kisses them while Bucky's body opens for his. 

"I'm _not_ going to hurt you," Steve retorts, a little breathless, kissing the heel of Bucky's hand, "not even because you're being an impatient bastard." 

"Fucking fussy old woman," Bucky says, but it's automatic, reflex, his eyes on Steve sliding his mouth down his thumb. Steve tastes metal, feels the thin grooves against his skin and watches Bucky's face, Bucky's pupils widening, his breathing getting quicker. 

Steve lets go of Bucky's arm and pulls his fingers back, slides his hand up over the curve of Bucky's hip; he kisses Bucky's shoulder and the back of his neck as he moves behind him. "Self-destructive masochistic jerk," he retorts to the skin behind Bucky's ear, as he lines himself up to slide in, carefully. 

Bucky reaches back to pull him closer. "Shut up and fuck me," he retorts, pushing back against Steve, and Steve's really, really okay with letting him have the last word on this one. 

Grateful that there's only so much he has to remember, to hold back on, to keep _I'm not going to hurt you_ the truth. 

Steve wraps an arm around Bucky's waist. He slides his hand up Bucky's abdomen, palm flat and fingers spread, over abdomen and ribs and chest to rest across Bucky's body, on his shoulder, pulling him back and holding him close. Bucky hisses into the end of a _yes_ that's barely more than a breath and covers Steve's hand with his right for a second, left hand braced beside Steve's against the table; the other word he breathes is _more_ , body pressing back against Steve, tightening around him, and that Steve can do. 

_God._

And there are things he can say here, and he does; here that he can _feel_ how they get under Bucky's skin because he's pressed so close to it, to him. He can feel what they do, what he does, and it's safe because it's babble, because some words fall apart, because if it's _that_ then nothing in Bucky has to fight hearing it, believing it. Has to argue. Just gets to hear, over and over. 

_Want you_ and _need you_ and _everything_ and _perfect_ , _gorgeous_ and _precious_ and _please_ and then _yours_. Desperate praise and truth and everything that goes wrong, other times. And he says it all because it's easy, because Bucky can hear them, but he knows that skin says more, clearer. Stays longer. 

Leaves the marks on Bucky's neck and back and shoulder, writing everything he says. 

And _we_ and _us, Christ, Bucky - always always us, whatever happens, whatever comes it's us_ and _stay with me, always_ and _stay, stay_. 

Now till Judgement Day. Every single promise true. 

Bucky comes with his head thrown back and Steve's hand stroking his throat, breath scraping in by deep gasps until it lets him go. Then he turns back, twists back to catch Steve's face and kiss him, murmur _come on, Steve,_ against his mouth. 

And Steve barely hears the screech of the table scraping a little ways across the floor over his own voice. 

When he lets himself sort of half fall back, half lie down on the floor, he pulls Bucky with him - isn't ready to let go. Pulls him back close instead, pressing body to body still and breathing the smell of metal and ozone and Bucky's skin from the curve of his neck. Enjoys the feeling of Bucky _relaxed_ against him. Of the way he lets go, can let go, and just lie there against Steve for at least a moment. 

Actually he could stay here for a while. Except for the cold that he knows is going to creep in, faster for Bucky than for him. Clearly he needs to scatter more blankets around. Washable blankets. 

In a lazy, thoughtful voice Bucky asks, "Did we rip my jeans?" 

Steve leaves his answer at an affirmative noise, and Bucky sighs, "Damn it," in a voice that's pretty unconvincing, at least when it comes to intensity. 

"Pretty sure y'could sew a patch on," Steve says, starting to resign himself to the part where they're going to have to move. Sort of. 

There's a pause and Bucky says, thoughtfully, "I'm not actually sure I remember how to sew." They're the kind of words that would have Steve tensing most of the time, at least a little, or looking for a diversion. Not with this tone, though, not now: there are moments, passing through, where Bucky's more at peace with the patchwork of memory, and this is unsurprisingly one of them. 

"I do," Steve says, reluctantly letting Bucky go enough to sit up. "I mean I haven't done it for . . . years, so I'm probably not very good at it anymore, but I remember." 

As Bucky sits up Steve catches another kiss, hand cradling the back of Bucky's head. The kiss goes on for a while, deep and easy; Steve likes this kind of kiss, slow ones, want without need. He likes a lot of other kinds of kisses too, granted. It's hard to overrate kissing. 

At the end of it Bucky rests his forehead against Steve's, faces still close, sides of their noses brushing, Steve's hand still cradling Bucky's head, and Bucky's left hand touching fingertips to Steve's chin. 

Then Bucky exhales and moves; he kisses Steve's forehead, then leans over to reach his shirt and throw it at him. 

 

Around four Jane sends out a mass text reading _i'm ordering stupid amounts of pizza and camping out in the lounge with beer and comfort movies because I hate my ex. the pizza's good the movies are at least entertainingly bad, the beer is whatever beer is in there so it's probably good. come remind me that I have made meaningful achievements in my life._

It shows up on both their phones; Bucky glances at it and quirks an eyebrow. "So somewhere out there is a dick Thor is manfully restraining himself from punching." 

"Or insulting in verse, at great length," Steve says. "That's apparently something Asgardians do." 

"Probably keeps the death-toll down," Bucky observes. 

They do end up going. It might be a risk, but Steve doesn't think it's that much of one, and it's probably worth it. And it turns out one of Jane's comfort movies is the Star Trek one about the whales, which Steve likes and Bucky tolerates, and listening to Tony explain why Jane's ex-boyfriend - a doctor - is a jerk who doesn't know his own ass from his elbow and definitely doesn't know how to behave in polite company ("and you _do?_ " Pepper interrupts, at that point, to which Tony replies, "Yes, I just don't always _do it_!") is kind of amusing. 

Steve sits on the floor in front of one of the arm-chairs, because it's perfectly comfortable and also because it puts him between Bucky and everyone else, which always seems to help, a little. Bucky's quiet, except for a couple of dry verbal swats at Darcy Lewis when she gets obnoxious, but it's not a bad quiet. 

Might actually be testing to see if it can be okay for other people to be around and to _be_ quiet. Steve files the thought away to consider later: it's probably a good idea. 

"No," Jane's saying, gesturing with the beer in her hand - her third - and frowning, "the thing that _gets to me_ is that I have literally everything I ever wanted. Everything! Including professional respect! And a really great boyfriend!" and she points at Thor, who she's leaning on, "who is actually a space-prince, which can I mention is like, back to what ten year old me secretly wanted - "

"Really?" Thor says, sounding curious and amused. Jane takes another drink, in the interruption, and nods a couple times. 

"Ten year old me wanted to be a space-princess," she explains, "but since I was pretty obviously an Earthling I was clearly going to have to marry into it. It's okay, though. I'm much more grown up now, and I promise would love you even if you weren't a space-prince." 

"I am delighted to hear it," he says, giving her a quick kiss - and then taking the half-full beer out of her hand. "But I think you should drink water for a while. You can have this back later." 

"Oh _fine_ \- anyway, the point is, I have _all_ of this," she goes on, "and him being a condescending ass on Facebook can still make me feel bad. I don't _get it_." 

"Seems pretty simple," Darcy interjects, in the ostentatiously bored voice Steve notices she uses a lot. "Your brain's obviously designated him as the dump-site for all the emotional memories of everyone who's ever condescended to you, so it's all, like, concentrated, so when he's a snotty fuck it kicks your ass." 

Jane pauses. "You know, you're probably right," she says, a little mournfully. "I should probably do something about that." 

Darcy snorts. "Eeeeeyeah," she says, drawing the first syllable out and reaching for another piece of pizza. 

Steve idly wonders how many interns casually spend an evening watching movies with the heads of their companies. Probably not a lot. Though Darcy seems to like keeping her lives separate: there's the one where she's an intern at Stark Tower, and then there's the one where she's Jane Foster's former grad student slash adopted younger sister neither of them admits to, and she seems vaguely uncomfortable when the two cross. Not totally thrown, but irritable the way kids at a dance are when it's their parent that chaperones. 

They have to pause the movie to explain the problem with Chekov and the "nuclear wessels" for Thor. Steve glances at Bucky but tonight, at least, references to the USSR and the Cold War aren't a problem. 

It's one of the things that's erratic, depends on what almost-inaccessible memories are nagging at him, or not, and how. Depends on whether his gut bothers to associate anything HYDRA used him for, and the wars that the rest of the world thought were the whole point. A lot of the time, it doesn't. To Steve it seems split something like sixty-forty, or seventy-thirty: HYDRA was the cuckoo's egg inside the USSR even more than it ever was inside SHIELD, and what they supported and let their tricks be used for depended on their agenda, the same as it did inside SHIELD. 

To them the world was a game-board, and they were the only real players: Soviets, NATO, everyone was just a piece to move around. They didn't live in the same world everyone else did, and so inasmuch as he was allowed to live at all, neither did Bucky. Just because the people he might get lent to though he was their tool didn't mean they were right, or that he thought they were. 

Inasmuch as he was allowed to think. 

Jane's second comfort movie is something called _Battleship_ , apparently based on the board-game - "No shut up, okay, I like it," she says - though it turns out that the connection is pretty tenuous, and mostly the movie's about trying to fight aliens with warships. Admittedly the bit with the old ship at the end (well, old to everyone in the room except Bucky and Steve) is fun, if completely ludicrous, and one of the old men makes Bucky murmur, "I think we knew that guy." 

It's nothing on the screen, Steve's pretty sure, that makes Bucky start to tense up. Just time, something in his head. Steve doesn't actually need to turn and look, can feel it from where Bucky sits behind him, and he actually doesn't think about it when he reaches over and rests one hand on Bucky's ankle. 

He should've, and he gives himself a mental smack upside the head for it: Bucky's still wary of being too close when other people can see, bar maybe Natasha, and never mind actually touching Steve, and Steve's got a few guesses why but no certainties, so it's not something he should let himself do without thinking. This time, though, it ends up being okay. 

This time it works. 

Steve can feel the tension ratchet back down, so he leaves his hand there, as the protagonist on screen finally gets up enough guts to talk to his fiancée's dad about proposing, and the dad plays him for a laugh. Darcy gripes for a minute about how stupid the whole ask-for-permission thing is, anyway, like it should be a dad's decision, and then looks startled when Steve and Bucky both end up laughing. 

"What?" she demands. 

"You think that admiral was allowed to say _no_?" Bucky asks, and Steve laughs a bit more at Darcy's startled face. 

"Trust me," he says. "The daughter'd already told her dad what his answer was going to be. And if he even thought about giving a different one, she'd throw a fit, if his wife's still around _she'd_ throw a fit, and probably any sisters he's got would throw a fit, and he'd end up eating cold leftovers for the next three months, and probably sleeping alone, somewhere other than his own bed. And his daughter'd marry the guy anyway." Steve opens both hands, sort of grasping at how to explain. "I mean, it is . . . kind of off, same way a dad walking his daughter down the aisle is, like he's giving her to her husband, like he gets to do that, but - girls like that tell their dads who they're marrying. They don't get told." 

"It's a dance," Bucky says. "It means her boyfriend loves her enough to ask something from her scary, scary father, and her dad loves her enough to do what she tells him whatever he thinks." 

Jane finishes up with _Life of Brian_ , making Darcy groan dramatically while everyone ignores her. 

"You know," Tony says thoughtfully, as they hit the end, "I think that could be our theme-song." Elizabeth rolls her eyes, and Pepper pushes at his shoulder with one bare foot. 

 

Later, back in the suite, Steve gets Bucky to let him work on his neck and shoulders for a while, before they go to sleep. He tries to, whenever something (and it's usually sex) means that Bucky's more relaxed than normal - it seems to have more effect, last longer. Bucky's still quiet, a bit, but it feels to Steve like the quiet of a resting cat - it's a quiet because being something else would mean moving from where he's resting, and he doesn't want to do that. And Steve figures that's probably fine. 

Running his fingers through Bucky's hair to comb it out of the way, all to one side, Grace Mathers flickers across Steve's mind again. It's probably unavoidable, and it'll probably stick with him, maybe forever. He wonders if he should find out where she's buried. He wonders if it matters. 

Abrikoska sticks her nose in at what he's doing, like she always does: it's like the body-work Steve tries to do perpetually baffles her, and she's still trying to figure out what he's up to. He scoops her up with one hand under her belly and passes her over Bucky's shoulder so Bucky can take her and settle her in his lap until Steve's done. 

When he hits the lights and pulls the comforter over them both, settling himself curled in behind Bucky with an arm over his waist, Steve does give in and ask, "You okay?" but as a question it's more comfortable than not. Checking. 

"Nnh," Bucky replies. "Close enough."


End file.
